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Title: Can't run most games at non-native resolutions.
Botonoski 4 Dec 2017
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When I use the proprietary nvidia drivers I lose the ability to change the resolution below the native res in a large portions of my game library. I can of course change the resolution in nvida-settings and xrandr, but switching the resolution then starting a game will often just force the game into windowed mode and not go fullscreen until I change it back to the native resolution.

I'm led to believe [by this source](https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/525287/linux/non-native-resolutions-not-available-in-3xx-drivers-on-8700m-gt/) that this is a result of nvidia's driver (as of v304) only reporting scaled resolutions on older versions of RandR, so an applications written before this driver change doesn't receive those available resolutions unless you're using those earlier versions of RandR.

I've googled around quite a bit trying to find a solution to this problem and haven't found anything that involves keeping my current drivers. Maybe no one else is having this issue? Maybe I'm the only person who needs to lower the res a bit to run games? Are my only options are to either switch over to the noveau drivers or rollback the nvidia driver?
Xpander 4 Dec 2017
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im using nvidia drivers also on a 2560x1440 monitor and im able to use all weird resolutions in games i played.
do you have example of game where it screws up for example? whats your nvidia settings conf? nvidia-auto-select?
Ehvis 4 Dec 2017
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The nvidia drivers report everything that is included in the EDID info from your monitor. The "scaled" modes refer to resolutions that run over the timings of another resolution. An extremely useful thing since you can configure your display exactly the way you want to. Unfortunately, xorg/xrandr does not allow all the things that the nvidia driver can do with viewportin/viewportout and you can't store these pseudo modes, making them unavailable (and misunderstood) in applications. In my opinion, this is something that needs to be addressed in xorg/xrandr.
Botonoski 26 Jan 2018
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Am I just going to have to throw out my 4k television because a majority of my game library chugs at its native res? Can't use the open-source drivers, doesn't play well with my 3D modeling software.
There's gotta be some way to jury rig the thing until some developer from wherever addresses the issue.
Hamish 27 Jan 2018
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Is there a reason why playing games in windowed mode is not an acceptable compromise? Or am I misunderstanding and that is not working for you as well?
Botonoski 27 Jan 2018
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I do not find that to be an agreeable compromise. I find myself distracted easily by window titlebars and wasted screen real estate.
Xpander 27 Jan 2018
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still you didn't list any examples. So its only some games that do not have some resolutions in their list? what about forcing resolutions via command line to the games? like for unity games -screen-height xxxx -screen-width xxxx, or tweaking the ini files etc. 4K is quite useless for gaming indeed, theres no GPU out in the market that can deliver desirable framerates on that resolution in many games. 1080Ti is the closest there is to push 4K, but imo still not there in terms of performance.
Ehvis 27 Jan 2018
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Funny thing about windowed mode. A lot of games will only report window sizes from the full screen resolutions list (Feral games for instance), which makes windowed mode pretty useless if your monitor doesn't cooperate.
Botonoski 27 Jan 2018
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Didn't really list any games because it just seems to affect all of 'em with very few exceptions. Seems like anything that isn't running through wine or is on the bleeding edge doesn't report alternate resolutions. Recently I picked up those free Amnesia games and neither reported anything but native res, you can tell it to run at a custom resolution, but the games'll ignore that and just run it at my screens full 4k. Happens in most source ports I try such as: Quakespasm, Yamagi Quake 2, Eduke32, and OpenMW to name a few. If I tell games to run at a certain resolution in the console, it'll often just ignore it or break in some manner.

This is one of the few times I've been unable to get Linux to behave in the manner I wanted it to and I find that to be bothersome. Recently I spent several hours getting the Linux framebuffer to work so that I could display movies and pictures from the console without staring an X Server. That was really neat, seems like if I'm able to do something like that I should be able to do something trivial like playing Quake at a ridiculously small and unplayable resolution just for larks.
Xpander 27 Jan 2018
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what about adding list of metamodes into nvidia's xorg config.

with one monitor something like:

Option "Metamodes" " 3840×2160;2560x1440,1920x1080;"

and so on to list all you need.
Botonoski 27 Jan 2018
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Did that, unfortunately didn't work. Adding a resolution like 853x480 allows me to switch to it with xrandr, but not in any game that has this issue.
Xpander 27 Jan 2018
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that is unfortunate, i never experienced this issue with my 2560x1440 monitor. games list lots of resolutions i can choose from. though i usually just can't deal with anything lower than 1440, cause the games will be quite blurry with lower resolutions due to pixel scaling.
Botonoski 27 Jan 2018
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Never really minded pixel scaling myself, at least to a point. 480p in entirely acceptable when I'm couch gaming, much more acceptable than a low framerate.
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